A RACIAL Code blocks Black high flyers from breaking into the upper echelons, one of Britain’s few Black female professors says.
Rules exist which serve to police the borders of elite society and executive positions and are “hidden in plain sight”, according to Nicola Rollock, professor of Social Policy and Race at King’s College London and fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Rollock has released a provocative new book, called The Racial Code, which spotlights a series of fictional scenarios involving a private members club, higher education and an arts institution.
In the bar of a top London hotel, Rollock spells out why she used the title.
“I like the word code because it suggests the sense of something that is hidden but yet present. Sort of hidden in plain sight.
“For Black people, it’s to act as a source of affirmation; you’re not going crazy!

“Because I think one of the consequences of those subtle forms of racism is that they leave you second guessing yourself.
“Did that really happen? Was I really spoken to in that way? Was I really overlooked for a third time? So it’s to provide affirmation.”
One of the chapters of her book centres on a character called Miles, a Savile Row-tailored and upwardly-mobile City lawyer on his first visit as a new member of an established private club.
From experiencing frostiness from the receptionist to his interaction with the Eton-educated Digbeth Winthorpe-Brown – who boasted that his father and grandfather were both members of the same club – to being mistaken for a waiter by a female member as he departed, the club reinforces elite barriers.
The interaction began with Winthorpe-Brown’s nose twitching as Miles proved himself about to command the conversation, and progressed to Winthorpe-Brown bringing up the issue of race with reference to how indignant he felt to be referred to as white.
“You’ll understand what I mean, you seem like a pretty decent type of chat”, he remarks patronisingly.
What Miles encounters at the club is a series of ‘filtering mechanisms’ based on class aimed at preserving the space for those born into privilege with an added layer of race.
Asked about the chapter, Rollock says: “Digbeth’s manner is a policing one. He’s inquiring about Miles who’s of mixed heritage, who’s professional and has every right to be, on social class terms, in this private members club.
“Being middle class is useful because it gives you some access and privilege in society. But if you’re Black it doesn’t mean that you are included.
“That inclusion is usually based on how white others manage and police that space, whether they feel to include you, and that power dynamic is absolutely crucial.”
Rollock said she did not necessarily see her book as a part two of her acclaimed ‘The Colour of Class: The educational strategies of the Black middle classes’, but there were common threads.
“I think some of us recognise that that game playing is going on, but I worry that we don’t recognise how pervasive that it is. I think that’s part of the same fabric, if you will, that same code of how society operates.”
The ‘code’ also differentiated between the “racially palatable”, who downplayed their racialised identity, and “racially salient” Black professionals.
As someone who takes pride in her natural hair and holidays in Barbados, Rollock acknowledged that she fell in the latter category.
“I talk about my cultural identity. I talk about, dare I say, racism. These are subjects that, for the most part, make white people feel uncomfortable, make the organisation uncomfortable.”
The code was not just about going to the right school, having the right connections and gaining the ‘social capital’ to fit in, in the top circles.
Black professionals are expected to actively downplay their identity, and even then they are still judged by the code based purely on the colour of their skin, despite ticking every other box.
“I ultimately think that this is about power”, Rollock adds. “We often think about social mobility only in class terms, without taking account of the fact that class plays out differently depending on your ethnic group.”
The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival is published by Penguin and available in all good book stores in hardback and paperback, plus ebook and audio.
Comments Form
1 Comment
“A RACIAL Code blocks ‘Black’ high flyers from breaking into the upper echelons,” reports Professor Nicola Rollock, one of England’s few Professors of Social Policy, and Race at King’s College London, and fellow at the University of Cambridge.
England’s current social history is replete with shocking examples of academics, and political appointees, and royal titled men and women of African-heritage, who use their status to avoid any contact: association, or assistance to His Majesty’s African skinned grass-roots Subjects.
England has no one of the academic calibre of Professor Angela Davis, Professor Cornel West, Professor Thomas Sewell, who use their scholarship to assist the narrative of African-American people.
For this reason, I actually support this institution’s “racial code.
I would like this institution to resist the Left’s demand for ethnic “diversity,” from Professor Nicola Rollock, as allowing ethnics, with their Left-wing demands, will only achieve the complete destruction of a perfectly respectable English institution.
This is a perfect example of privileged Africa skinned professor using her African skin-colour to complain about her exclusion, whilst these same African-heritage Professors ignore skin-colour exclusion widely endured by His Majesty’s grass-roots men and women of African, African-Caribbean, and African-Dual-heritage Subjects.
When will His Majesty’s African heritage ethnics, gain the maturity to create our own aristocratic institutions, instead of always attacking the existing English ones?